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Cape Verdean Crioulo languages

Encyclopedia : C : CA : CAP : Cape Verdean Crioulo languages

The Cape Verdean Crioulo is a dialect continuum spoken on the islands of Cape Verde, whose extremes lie at the islands of Santiago and that of Santo Antão. They are creole languages based on Portuguese and influenced by West African languages.

Even though over 90% of their words are derived from Portuguese, the Crioulos are not mutually intelligible with Portuguese. The pervasive erosion words and, especially, the very different grammar (strongly influenced by West African languages) make it extremely difficult for a Portuguese speaker even to establish a basic conversation.

Contents

Internal classification

Cape Verdean Crioulos are usually classified into two branches: A characteristic feature of the Barlavento creoles is their use of the palato alveolar fricative sound.

One can distinguish in the Crioulo of Santiago two dialects, urban and rural, the former having been re-influenced by Portuguese in recent times.

The differences between the Crioulos of Santiago and Santo Antão are as great as the differences between Portuguese and Spanish, which justifies calling the Crioulo varieties "languages" rather than "dialects".

Origins

The roots of crioulo are Old Portuguese and West African languages.

Status

As Portuguese is used in every day life (mainly in school and in relation with foreign countries) Portuguese and the Cape Verdean Creoles live in a state of diglossia. Due to this overall presence of Portuguese, a decreolization process occurs for all the different capeverdean crioulo varieties or languages.

French is taught as the most popular learning language in school. Cape Verde is also one of the three lusophone members of the 'Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie'.

The dominant variety is Bádiu, the Crioulo of Santiago — which is the main island of Cape Verde, and the location of the country's capital Praia. Bádiu is due to become the country's official language with Portug uese. However, the proposed writing system (ALUPEC), which is based on Santiago writing traditions, has not been well received in the other islands, which have their own 100 year old writing histories and fear losing their own cultural identity. There are also many advocates of using just Portuguese in the classroom.

The Crioulo of São Vicente is also important since it is spoken in Cape Verde's cultural capital, Mindelo. Some Crioulo advocates, like Manuel Veiga, propose the development of two uniformized official languages: a North (Barlavento) standard, centered on the Crioulo of São Vicente, and a South (Sotavento) standard, centered on that of Santiago.

Eugénio Tavares
Eugénio Tavares
The major Crioulos have significant literature:

There exists no complete translation of the Bible. However, Sérgio Frusoni produced a New Testament in the São Vicente Crioulo, Vangêle contód d'nôs móda, translated from Bartolomeo Rossetti's version in Rome dialect (Er Vangelo Seconno Noantri).



Language description


Grammar

There exist numerous parallels between the Cape Verdean creoles and the West African languages (i.e.: lack of distinction of voice, verbal adjectives, adjectives following the noun, the use of intonation to differentiate between interrogative and declarative sentences, frequent repetition of words, presence of African morphological structures, etc.). The language of Santiago is also very close to the creole of Guinea-Bissau (Upper Guinea Creole) from mainland Africa, with some intelligibility.



Vocabulary

Considering Santiago Crioulo (the only that has been sufficiently studied): more than 90% of the vocabulary is derived from Portuguese, the remaining is derived from West African languages.



Writing system

There is a new orthographic convention, named [ALUPEC] which stands for "Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita do Caboverdiano" (Portuguese), "Alfabetu Unifikadu pa Skrita di Kabuverdianu" (Kriolu) which is written in Latin Alphabet. It has 23 letters and four digraphs: A B S D E F G H I J DJ L LH M N NH N O P K R T U V X TX Z. ALUPEC is based on efficiency and tries to simply the orthographic system.



Cape Verdean Crioulos differences




 Santiago Crioulo 
 São Vicente Crioulo 
 São Nicolau Crioulo 
 Santo Antão Crioulo	
 Fogo Crioulo	
 English


	.	
 They said to me.


	.	
 You are not beautiful.


	.	
 No, don't


	.	
 I don't know.


 What is your name?


 Can you help me?


 Look at here!


 I am singing.


 He/she sang.


	.	
 Woman


	.	 
 Why?


	.	 
	.	
 To write


	.	 
 Now


	.	 
	.	
 Pig


	.	 
	.	
 To know


	.	 
 To leave


	.	 
	.	
 Leave me alone!


	.	 
	.	
 Sweet


	.	 
 	.	
 To throw, to put


	.	 
	.	
 Dirty


	.	 
 To listen


 To say


 To speak


	.	 
 Fault


	.	 
	.		
 Your friend


	.	 
 	.	
 To turn, to become


	.	 
	.	
 Dark


 	.	
	.	
 Here I am!


	.	
 	.	
 Car






Bibliography

For details see the following books:





External links

note: Ethnologue considers it one language, and names it Kabuberdianu, although the name is not used by Capeverdean crioulos speakers and others to refer to the language.
















 





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